Weekly Update: 18th March 2022

Published March 18, 2022

Time is certainly flying by at the moment; we’re halfway through the half term and so much has already happened and is due to happen over the coming weeks!

Year 11 have been tackling their final set of mocks with maturity and the seriousness that they deserve; we’ve also had some excellent external speakers speaking to a number of year groups RE: careers this week during PHSE lessons, and in addition there are lots of HA activities on the horizon (Platinum Jubilee quiz for Year 9 against St John Fisher school and the Year 10 RE HA Trip to see Les Mis at the Mayflower in Southampton to name but a few).

Parent Survey: Safeguarding

In partnership with Wiltshire, Dorset, and Swindon Local Authority, we are one of ten pilot schools working together to review our policies, approaches and culture regarding harm students can face outside the home, to improve their safety in contexts such as the community, school and online.

This pilot work, supported and funded by the Department for Education, hopes to shape the way our school and other schools locally, regionally, and nationally can continue to improve their approaches to keeping children and young people safe. We’re delighted to be involved in this pilot as it will help to shape best practise across our region and further afield.

On a separate email, there is a link through to a parent survey – we’d be very grateful if you could spare a few minutes to complete this for us.

St Joseph’s Day

The Feast Day of St Joseph is tomorrow and as a school we will be marking our school feast day on Monday.  We’ll be sharing a special feast day prayer in forms and pupils can enjoy a free ice cream at lunchtime to celebrate the feast day!

Lent Campaign, Donations & Ukraine

A sincere and heartfelt thank you for all your generous donations for both the Trussell Trust Food Bank and also the humanitarian aid for Ukraine.  We have made two drop offs now of aid for Ukraine and hope to do many more in the future.

Today, we also began our fundraising for Ukraine with ‘Sponge a Teacher’.  Pupils needed no encouragement to put their hands in their pockets to buy a chance to soak their teachers!  Photos are over on our school Twitter feed (@sjcssalisbury).

Year 8 Parent’s Evening

Final reminder, next Wednesday is the virtual parents’ evening for all Year 8 pupils.  If you have not yet made your appointments, please do so by clicking here: https://saintjosephs.schoolcloud.co.uk/

Appointments are available from between 4pm and 7pm. We look forward seeing you online next week!

Sports for Champions

Renowned Commonwealth Games Finalist Robert Mitchell (High Jump) is visiting St Joseph’s Catholic School on Tuesday 5th April 2022, and we need your support!

All pupils will be involved in a workshop with Rob that will help support their mental and physical health after multiple national lockdowns. After taking part in circuits, Rob will talk about his specific sporting experience, the basics of his sport and his progress through to the more difficult skills he learnt through his sporting career.  He will give hints and tips which have helped him the past.  He will also discuss with pupils the Four Key Elements associated with SUCCESS: Teamwork, Responsibility, Communication and Creativity. 

We’re asking parents/carers to help make this a memorable event for our pupils, whilst also raising money to go towards our own sports facilities at St Joseph’s. With every penny raised the school will benefit from new equipment in the Sports Hall/Gym for pupils to use.

Last week, pupils were given a sponsorship form to bring home to support this event.  We also have a Crowd Funder page which can be used if preferable to the sponsorship form.

If using the crowdfunding page, please put your child’s forename or initials and form group, so that we can track the total raised by a pupil and identify their form group total.  The crowd funding page also gives an overview of our guest and the role of Sports for Champions UK.

What am I sponsoring?

Pupils have been asked to raise money to support their efforts to perform circuits (delivered by Rob Mitchell) which will consist of:

  • Burpees  x 60 seconds
  • Tricep Dips x 30 seconds
  • Leg Drives x 60 seconds
  • Star Jumps x 30 seconds
  • Full or Half press ups x 60 seconds

As an incentive for their hard work in raising the following amounts of money, your child will be rewarded as follows:

  • £5 – £14.99: Postcard photograph of the athlete they are meeting on the day
  • £15 – £34.99: A4 autographed poster of Rob Mitchell
  • £35+: Autographed instance photo of pupil with the Rob Mitchell mounted in a keepsake wallet
  • Free stickers for all
  • Form Group winner for raising most sponsorship money: Certificate of Appreciation from Team GB to be displayed in school

All sponsorship money and forms to be brought into school by Tuesday 29th March via pupil post – even a £1 donation would be amazing!

House Competitions

This is the second week of House Competitions and they’ve been excellent!  Last week saw Teresa house turn out the overall winners of Dodgeball and this week saw the turn of Benchball.  At the time of writing the competition was yet to happen, but I’m confident of another Teresa victory!  Next week will see our footballers take centre stage in what is sure to be a hotly contested indoor football competition!

Achievement Points Race

The battle for 2nd & 3rd spot is getting closer! 

  • 1st place: Margaret with 36,248 points
  • 2nd place: Vincent with 34,215 points
  • 3rd place: Teresa with 33,319 points
  • 4th place: Francis with 29,405 points

Points do mean prizes and pupils this week have been informed of the qualifying criteria for the annual rewards trip to Thorpe Park in the summer term!

Have a lovely weekend!

Mr Rooney

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